Family name origins & meanings
- Czech (Pivoňka) : descriptive nickname for someone with rosy cheeks, from pivoňka ‘peony’.
- In the 1840s five brothers called Piwonka jumped the draft in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and emigrated to America. One stayed in NY, another went on to the Cleveland, OH, area, another further west (probably to the coast), and another to Chile in South America; the descendants of the fifth brother live near Lubbock, TX. They all kept the Piwonka spelling of the name with the exception of the Cleveland branch.